Now, you naysayers out there might say that this is impossible. But if you actually told me that, I would send you to Kamakura! About an hour outside of Tokyo is the smaller city of Kamakura, full of temples in the mountains and a beautiful beach that looks out upon both the Pacific Ocean and on clear days Mt. Fuji also! It was suggested to me by multiple people so I decided to take a look. In one day, my friends and I managed to visit at least 3 main temples/shrines and countless other structures. We hiked in the mountains for four hours. And then when we were done with that, there was an obligatory visit to the beach! Not many places can boast the ability to do ALL of that in one day.

Starting out, Josh M, Anthony and I met up at Kamakura station in the morning. We bought passes for the city bus and rail line, dropped our bento in a coin locker and then headed towards the starting point of one of the many recommended walking tours of Kamakura. I believe that in the end, we created out own trail though.

The first stop was Tsurugaoka Hachimangu; a large temple just northeast of the station. In the building at the base of the steps up to the temple, a wedding was occurring!! I got to see my first traditional Japanese wedding! Needless to say, I thought it was super cool.

We also all bought Omikuji to see what our fortune was. After boast about all the good luck he has been getting, Anthony pulled his first bad luck. Josh bought his first Omikuji and it was good luck, and so was mine! I put the charm from my omikuji on my cell phone case. Because that is what all the cool kids do.

After seeing everything we could find to see at Tsurugaoka Hachimangu, the three of us headed to the next big place, Kenchoji. This was a Buddhist temple where we paid only 200 or 300 yen to get in and I am still quite surprised at how low the price was. Here we were able to enter a temple and climb hills in all directions, most of them leading to cemeteries where I was able to share my newly acquired from the week before knowledge about Japanese burial rituals.

Then we decided to follow a bunch of trails inside of Kenchoji and ended up climbing a mountain! Somehow we ended up following about a 4-hour hiking trail through the mountains to get to Zuisenji and it was definitely worth the views. We were able to see the very tip of Fuji-san in between the clouds, the beach, and even Tokyo! It was quite a fun time and showed me how much work I need to do to get into shape for climbing Fuji-san in July!!

Then we finally arrived at Zuisenji, after a few nice twists and turns down the mountain and then we had to climb UP again to get into the temple! But it was beautiful and I am glad I went!

At this point, we were well past lunch time and our bento boxes were still in the station! So being very tired and having unused bus passes, we found a bus that returned to the station. There we picked up our lunches and then asked for travel advice on getting to the beach. Fortunately we knew enough Japanese to converse with the tourism counter attendants about which bus to take and off we were! While I highly suggest going to the beach while in Kamakura, I can’t say that eating on the beach is the greatest idea. We were fine with our non-meat-and-potatoes portion of our meal but not long after we opened the Japanese meat-and-potatoes that I made we got attacked by a bird. If you take food to the beach please be careful!

After we ate we decided to go see Daibutsu (a REALLY big Buddha statue), but when we got there it was closed. Apparently everything in Kamakura closes around 6pm. Because of that we called it a night. Now of course, you all know me and there’s no way I can go somewhere with flowers without taking pictures and you MAY have even realized there weren’t make flowers pictures above. That’s because they are all right here! Enjoy!

Kamakura is going onto my "must-visit in Japan list. It was a great experience and I want to go back to experience more!!!